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<title>Misalignment by richie-tozier-is-my-eboy (HiKidsDoYouLikeViolence)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25097326">Misalignment</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiKidsDoYouLikeViolence/pseuds/richie-tozier-is-my-eboy'>richie-tozier-is-my-eboy (HiKidsDoYouLikeViolence)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Dysphoria, Both internal &amp; external, Character Study, Crossdressing, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Guilt, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, MTF Richie Tozier, Makeup, Other, Pining, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Self-Hatred, Trans Female Character, Trans Richie Tozier, Transphobia, Underwear Theft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:00:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25097326</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiKidsDoYouLikeViolence/pseuds/richie-tozier-is-my-eboy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Seventeen-year-old Richie Tozier has a secret. One even bigger than the humongous, irresponsible crush he's habouring on his male best friend. </p><p>Armed with the knowledge he has the house to himself for the night, Richie faces the dilemma of being alone with his mother's makeup just upstairs.</p><p>It's hard to talk himself out of, especially when he's already done a lot worse.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beverly Marsh &amp; Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Maggie Tozier &amp; Richie Tozier, Maggie Tozier &amp; Richie Tozier &amp; Wentworth Tozier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>94</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Misalignment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>a few months ago I stumbled across a lovely fanart of bevy doing richie's makeup<br/>inspired, i immediately hopped on ao3 to try and find some MTF!Richie to read, but alas, my search came up with nothing<br/>looks like if you want something done, ya gotta do it yourself x<br/></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Richie can’t pinpoint exactly when this need had started, but he knows that now, in this very moment, that it is spiralling out of control.</p><p>He’s sat alone in his parents’ bedroom, gangly legs trembling under the table of his mother’s vanity dresser. He stares at his reflection. His dark eyes are haunted with guilt behind the frames of his glasses. They plead with Richie to change his mind, to leave and go back downstairs, but he stays where he is.</p><p>The house is empty. Went and Maggie left for a date night a little over twenty minutes ago. They went to the Aladdin Theatre in town to see <em> Cape Fear</em>. Won’t be back until past midnight at least so there’s plenty of time.</p><p>Richie understands this but it doesn’t stop the rapid spitfire of his heart. Shame has long since settled heavy and hot in the pit of his stomach. Unmoving since Richie had thought up the idea yesterday during dinner, when he’d found out he was getting the house to himself.</p><p>He breathes in and out to try and alleviate the pressure. It works somewhat and Richie’s hand smoothes over the vanity's polished surface. It moves tentatively to slide open the draw.</p><p>Richie peeks inside. Maggie’s makeup stares back and he isn’t sure where to start.</p><p>He chews at his bottom lip. Just the thought of anyone seeing him here like this, especially his parents, is enough to make him feel sick all over again.</p><p>What is he doing? This is stupid. He shouldn’t be doing this.</p><p>The slam of the draw makes Richie jump despite his own hand having caused it. He jumps to his feet to flee, but when he gets to the doorway he hesitates. His head stoops, knuckles turning white as they grip the door handle.</p><p>Richie’s eyes squeeze shut. He’s been doing a lot of weird things recently he can’t put into words, <em> thinking </em> a lot of weird things for much, much longer than that.</p><p>He had really tried to kid himself that this fascination he has with women was normal, had tried to anchor himself with it.</p><p><em> But I like girls, too, </em> his thoughts once whined when his gaze would linger without his consent. On men. On the boys at school. On Eddie Kaspbrak. </p><p><em> But I like girls, too! </em> the lie would mewl. <em> It’s okay because I like girls, too! I do! I like them! </em></p><p>Yeah, Richie likes girls. Not in the way Bill or Mike or the rest of their male friends like them, but he likes them. Likes them differently. Selfishly. <em> Jealously. </em></p><p>The realisation had only been cemented the moment Richie stole one of Beverly’s sticks of Teen Spirit deodorant last year, everything snowballing from there. </p><p>Richie never takes anything big, nothing valuable. Just little things here and there: a pink gel pen, a tampon, a forgotten, flavoured chapstick. Emboldened after months of being unnoticed, Richie soon stole her hair clips, too, a few jelly bracelets he’s sure that she’d never miss and, most humiliatingly of all, a bra Bev threw out whilst Richie was around at her house, complaining that the wires now poked out the sides.</p><p>Richie sometimes takes the draw out from his wardrobe to where he’s hidden everything underneath and just admires his little collection. He’s certain if anyone ever discovers it, they’ll assume he’s some kind of pervert, but Richie doesn’t get any sort of thrill out of it, sexual or otherwise. It’s more of a dull, aching comfort to slip the straps of Beverly’s bra over his shoulders, brush and clip his hair, slather Teen Spirit under his arms so he can close his eyes and pretend he’s allowed to smell like a girl for a few moments.</p><p>It’s always followed by the nausea-inducing guilt, of course, but that initial relief is too intoxicating to resist.</p><p>As much as he adores Bev with all his heart, it would be a lie to pretend this has anything to do with her. She just happens to be the only girl Richie knows, the only girl stuff he has access to outside of his mother.</p><p>It feels wrong to be using her but Richie doesn’t know what else to do.</p><p>He pushes his glasses up his nose and abandons the whole thing in favour of a cigarette on the back porch.</p><p>It’s already dark out. Richie crouches down on the balls of his feet, taps a smoke between his teeth and uses his clipper to light it up. He sighs out grey plumes and immediately feels better.</p><p>He looks out across the garden. A column of light from the back door cuts across the damp grass. Richie traces the groves in the wood by his feet, re-evaluating.</p><p>Richie had originally forced himself to wait out his parents’ departure a good twenty-five minutes before he’d gathered the nerve to sneak upstairs in the first place. It isn’t like Maggie and Went’s bedroom is off-limits to Richie, but it isn’t somewhere they’d expect their seventeen-year-old son to be hanging out in. That would be weird.</p><p>“It’s all weird,” mumbles Richie, blows smoke. “So fucking weird.”</p><p>His nerves have him close to chickening out, but Richie knows he isn’t going to get another chance like this one for a while. </p><p>Although Went often isn’t home, Maggie often is. </p><p>There’s no way Richie has the balls to rummage through her intimate belongings whilst she’s in the house, even whilst she’s wiped out, taking one of her late afternoon wine-naps on the sitting room’s sofa.</p><p>Richie crushes what’s left of the cigarette, slips the filter between the slats of the decking, stares into space a little longer.</p><p>He makes his decision and goes back to Maggie’s vanity draw.</p><p>Like last time, Richie brushes the smooth wood, uses the metal handle to slide it open. He takes a long moment to carefully memorise the placement of everything.</p><p>Careful is the last word Richie’s friends and family would use to describe him but Richie is hyper aware that careful is exactly what he needs to be if he wants to remain uncaught. </p><p>He can’t risk it. As far as he’s concerned, Maggie never needs to know he was ever in here. Richie is good at reading a room, reading people, but he can’t envision her reaction to knowing what her son has been getting up to behind closed doors. Whatever it may be, Richie is certain he does not want to find out.</p><p>He sits, sideways this time, and begins getting a better look at the things that pique his interest. </p><p>Richie first removes a little pot filled with black, then another, bigger tub filled with translucent powder, scented with a smell he doesn’t recognise. There are thin boxes Richie finds circles of colour inside, many tubes of different shapes and sizes, most the writing across them so worn-out that it’s illegible. </p><p>He takes note of each item and tries to determine its purpose. Goes about it with the same methodicalness he uses for pythagoras theorem or balancing chemical equations. Only this subject is way further out of Richie’s depth, not something as easily memorised and understood.</p><p>Richie unscrews one of the tubes, curious. It pulls apart to reveal a narrow stem, its bristles coated with a tar-like substance. He knows this one. It’s for eyelashes. </p><p>He smiles, briefly pleased with himself. He recognises it would be a bad call to try and use it however, so he screws it back together. Sets it onto the dresser beside the rest of Maggie’s cosmetics.</p><p>Back to mindful rummaging, Richie finds a little box at the back of the draw. Flipping open the lid reveals a dainty glass bottle. Perfume. <em> Dior</em>, apparently.</p><p>“Fuck me,” he breathes anxiously, getting it out. It’s obvious expense reminds Richie of how much Maggie would be seriously, completely and without a single ounce of doubt kicking his ass right now if she could see him messing with her stuff.</p><p>Lack of impulse control means the top is already off. Richie spritzes a little onto his wrist.</p><p>He ducks down to get a better whiff. It smells like Maggie. Richie’s brows crease and he sets the bottle aside. He’d rather not smell like his mother.</p><p>Richie looks over the little collection in front of him. He isn’t sure why he got out so much. It isn’t like he can use a lot of it anyway. Even if he knew how to, Richie’s blocky glasses take up most of his face. Taking them off wouldn’t fix the problem either, would just make the application of anything an impossibility thanks to his blurry vision.</p><p>Because of this, Richie takes his time deciding. He’s sweating. In the end he reaches for the one thing he recognises the most out of the array of choices: lipstick.</p><p>He pops off the cap. It’s the colour of red maple, a rich rouge in the yellow light. Richie sniffs it gingerly. Roses.</p><p>Taking the tube in both hands, he rolls it up like he’s practised with Beverly’s chapstick, watched Maggie do many-a-time over the years, and is hit with a memory; sat on the edge of the bed behind him during that purgatory between toddler and child, watching Maggie get ready in a morning.</p><p><em> “You look soooo pretty, Mommy!” </em> Richie would tell her, bouncing in place, excited for when he was older and he got to be pretty, too.</p><p><em> “Thank-you, honey,” </em> Maggie would placate as she curled her hair, no doubt relieved she had found something that kept Richie sitting still for longer than five minutes.</p><p>A car drives by behind the curtains and Richie flinches, head whips towards the sound, on edge.</p><p>Richie quickly realises what it was, that it’s already gone, and exhales.</p><p>He gets up to peek just in case. The driveway is still empty so he goes back to Maggie’s lipstick.</p><p>Richie is aware he’s not the first guy in the world to play with makeup, nor the first to take an interest in skirts and dresses, in pretending to be a woman. Richie knows what drag queens are. He knows about transvestites. Still, neither of those boxes feel applicable to his situation.</p><p>Drag queens and trannies do things like this for sexual gratification. For fun. Nothing about this is fun for Richie Tozier. </p><p>He glances helplessly to his reflection, to the lippy.</p><p>It’s time. He is doing this. This is happening. Inside his ribcage is thudding so violently he can hear it in his ears. He brings the lipstick closer.</p><p>“Like ripping off a bandaid,” Richie reassures the boy in the mirror before he boldly sweeps it along his bottom lip.</p><p>He stops, heart in his throat. Leans back to check its placement. </p><p>Okay. It’s wobbly for sure but that’s fine. It just needs neatening up. Richie can do that. </p><p>He continues his application but finds it more difficult than he thought due to being a novice with sweaty palms. Still… not too bad. So far, so good.</p><p>Richie moves in closer still to paint his upper lip. His brows furrow in concentration. The longer he works, the more he’s almost excited to see the result. He inches the placement bit by bit, careful to follow the curve of his mouth.</p><p>Done, Richie rolls his lips together. He snaps the lid back into place, sits back to admire his work.</p><p>His eager anticipation drops like a lead balloon.</p><p>It looks... terrible.</p><p>He isn’t sure what he was expecting. Of course it looks terrible. Richie’s a boy. The things in Maggie’s draws aren’t meant for him. He <em> knows </em> this. Knows it the most out of everything he knows. Tells it to himself all the time.</p><p>“You’re not a girl, idiot,” Richie says aloud, watches the face in the mirror crumple.</p><p>If only. If only he had been born that way. With wider hips and narrower shoulders. Delicate hands and smaller feet. A round face, smooth skin, <em> breasts. </em> </p><p>Richie wants a new body. One that feels right. One that he feels like he belongs to. Instead he’s trapped in this oafish form, forced to carry around this foreign presence between his legs like some kind of punishment from God. Always in the way, ever present. </p><p>He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him and he’s too afraid to ask, isolated and alone on this island of shame he’s constructed. Population of one.</p><p>Richie might not be a girl but he wants it so badly it hurts. </p><p>He likes to imagine a world where he could have been a <em> she</em>. Maggie would have tied ribbons into her hair on the first day of kindergarten, scold Richie for getting her dress dirty rather than this timeline’s dreaded <em> “Boys will be boys.” </em> Wentworth would call Richie his little girl, scoop her up in warm cuddles, no more firm, friendly claps to the back, no more <em> “Son.” </em></p><p>She would get to whisper about boys with Bev in the playground. Have her first period at thirteen. Go out shopping for shoes and nail polish. She’d still play at the arcade and run about in the woods by the quarry with the rest of the losers, of course, but she’d be happier, wouldn’t have to hide who she was.</p><p>The boys at their school would notice her. Not in the sneering way they notice her now. She’d be desirable. Most of all, she’d be desirable to the person whose affection matters the most. The person that warms Richie from head to toe every time he cracks at one of her jokes, joins her in the clubhouse’s hammock, grants her one of his smiles.</p><p>She’d give him her first kiss. Her first time, too. He’d be Richie’s boyfriend. She’d get to experience him holding her hand in the halls, carrying her textbooks, telling her she was pretty in between all of the natural idiosyncrasies that endeared him to Richie in the first place.</p><p>Eddie. Just thinking of him in this moment of weakness makes Richie disgusted with herself. It’s enough to bring Richie out his fantasies, scared of what her friend would do if he knew how pathetically in love with him she is. <em> He </em>is. </p><p><em> He, he, he, </em>thinks Richie miserably.</p><p>At the very least, Richie just wishes he could exist as someone valuable enough to hold any sort of positive attention outside of the class clown role he had boxed himself into for his own protection.</p><p>Richie frowns. Looks away from the reflection he hates so much he can barely stand it, stained lips mocking him. </p><p>“I look like a queer,” he laughs wetly. </p><p>It’s true but the punchline doesn’t feel very funny. Richie tries to smile at how silly this all is. He’s being ridiculous after all. So stupid. So weird. He’s so weird. </p><p>He tries to smile but his lips don’t move.</p><p>Richie wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He wants it gone but the lipstick just smudges everywhere, smears red across his cheek, the skin of his hand. It only frustrates Richie further. Fills him with regret. Makes him feel small.</p><p>He is silent as the tears begin to drip steadily. Fat blobs splash against his hand and slide off the waxy residue, marking the table with damp splotches.</p><p>He gathers himself.</p><p>Richie puts everything away where he found it. He flicks off the lightswitch and doesn’t look back.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://richie-tozier-is-my-eboy.tumblr.com">my tumblr</a>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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